WordPress is a great platform in terms of its flexibility and ability to run as a content management system. But how great is WordPress in terms of Search Engine Optimization?
Right out-of-the-box WordPress is very search engine friendly, meaning that your site can be easily crawled and indexed by almost any search engine.
But most of us are not really concerned with having an se-friendly website, rather we are all looking to create a search engine optimized site to help improve our rankings and come out on top!
In this really long post I will provide you with my distinction between being search engine friendly and being search engine optimized then I will take you through some of the basics of any site optimization and later through the various things you can do to optimize WordPress for search engines.
I hear people talking all the time about creating sites or blogs that are Search Engine Friendly.
When it comes to ranking on the top of any search engine, there is nothing friendly about it. In fact, what you are really doing is competing with thousands if not millions of sites that also want to be in that first spot.
For this reason I wanted to make it really clear before going on that what I am about to teach you is not just how to be more friendly for the spiders but how you can crush your competition and come out on top.
Remember: “The Grass is always greener when you are number 1 on Google”
I am going to go over this quick because there is no point in explaining why my method works, all you need to know is that it does. So here is the most basic and important things to think about in terms of SEO.
One of the most important and first things to do when setting up your WordPress blog is to cover your SEO (search engine optimization) basics. While you may be an expert in static page SEO, when it comes to wordpress it is a whole other playing field.
SEO for WordPress is focused mainly on the technical infrastructure of your WordPress blog, as well as your ability to create interesting articles that people want to read about and link to (important!).
Below you can find a short (yet ultimate) guide that will teach you some basic, however very effective WordPress SEO techniques.
So why SEO? SEO means Search Engine Optimization. In other words, it means to optimize your site so that Search Engines will fall in love with it and index it higher in searches. SEO can make a huge difference on the amount of visitors on your site. In fact, changing just a little bit of better search engine optimization on your wordpress site can really make your traffic sore.
What I have called below the “Ultimate WordPress SEO Guide” is merely a list of proven to work techniques that could greatly improve the search rankings and indexing of your wordpress blog or website on the major search engines (mainly Google).
In order to target SEO correctly on your WordPress blog, it is important to divide it into multiple sections (posts, pages, links…etc). However, to make it easier for you and myself I will divide my guide in 2 main groups, On Page and Off Page SEO. An than divide the former into their proper subgroups.
On Page SEO
As you may infer, On Page SEO refers to any optimization that can be done to your actual WordPress Blog that will help you win the “keyword war” and ultimately gain a higher position on search engine results. For WordPress, On Page SEO is typically associated with your posts pages, titles, posts, descriptions, links, content, etc.
WordPress Post Title Optimization
By default WordPress page titles are poorly constructed. Your post and page titles will normally include your page/post title along with your websites title.
While this may be ok for some keyword rich website names, it could also be quite harmful.
For example in my blog, if I had the title “AJ Clarke – Internet Entrepreneur and Blogger” followed by the page title on all my posts, not only would it look ridiculous but it would add a whole bunch of useless keywords to my title.
When dealing with Post and Page title optimization most people will lean towards using a plugin such as All in One SEO, which is an amazing plug-in. I would highly recommend using it and adjusting the page and post title tags as shown in the image below.
Remember keep the amount of keywords short and sweet, the less variety of keywords on your WordPress titles, the more powerful the ones you have will be.
WordPress Post Description Optimization
The post description is also of great important to the SEO of your WordPress Blog. If you make any search on a search engine, you will see that under the title of the results there is a brief description of that page/post. See the image below:
Having these post descriptions are of extreme importance to the SEO of your WordPress blog. Not only will the descriptions help encourage users to click on your links, but they will also help add some more keywords to your blog post and thus also help in the rankings of your WordPress blog/site.
One of the best ways of adding the meta description tags to your posts is again with the All in One SEO plugin which will add the option below your posts. See image below:
WordPress Permalinks Optimization
Have you notice what your posts links look like when you first install WordPress? Well, they tipically look like the following:
http://wpexplorer.com/?p=25
See a problem? The problem, is that there are no keywords attached to the link structure of your posts and pages. For better WordPress SEO it is extremely important to customize your site’s/blog’s permalinks.
For my sites I will typically use the following permalink structure:
/%postname%/
Some people, however, prefer the following permalink structure:
/%category%/%postname%/
Both Permalink structures are good for SEO, it just really depends on what type of categories you have on your site and whether you want search engines to index your category pages. Also, if you use the category structure (the 2nd permalink option) you must make sure that the categories are made up of crucial keywords that are related to your posts.
WordPress Duplicate Content Optimization
This may seem like a no brainier, but it is really important to avoid duplicate content on your wordpress blog/site. While most people do not write the same post twice, WordPress has a tricky way of allowing dublicate content with the archive and category pages.
The way I go around this problem is again with the All in One SEO WordPress Plugin, because it will give you the option to choose what you do and do not want search engines to crawl.
Below is the current no index settings I have set up for most my blogs:
Like any other site either WordPress or not, linking is of great importance to SEO.
To keep it simple for now just make sure you meet the following:
Try to link within your site as much as possible. This can be done maily by linking keywords on posts to other posts or by playing related posts links at the bottom of the page with plugins or manually.
Regarding External links…Make sure to keep these as minimal as possible and to add the rel=”nofollow” tag to all your “sketchy” links. Remember though, the more external links and the less backlinks the weaker your site will look to search engines.
Off Page SEO
Off Page SEO generally refers to any optimization that is done to help increase the branding of your site/blog and thus help increase the backlinks to your site. In other words, off page seo refers to the way in which you can make your blog or website more popular on the web.
WordPress Post Social Optimization
You have seen them on every site and there is no question as to why they are there. Social icons and buttons can be found on almost any blog because people truly like to share things that they found interesting, helpful, funny, etc. So to keep this post a little less long, just remember to add social icons and buttons to your site.
If you manage to get your wordpress blog across the various social networking sites than you will gain a much larger audience and possibly greater page rank.
What makes a post special? What makes anything special?
Uniqueness. It is very important to write on topics that no one else has written about. If you are the first to write about something it is much more likely that your post will appear first on search results.
Along with the same topic…If you manage to find some sort of Niche that you really like to write about, that exploit it and add the keywords of that topic all over your site. The more you write on a specific topic (hopefully a niche topic) the more keywords you will get across your site .
Directory Submission is a KEY factor in SEO for any site but even more for your WordPress Blog. Directories are not only key for getting higher page rank do to more dofollow backlinks, but many directories these days will show your blog’s feed as well as there are many directories specifically for Wordpres sites. Get your site out there and submit a link to your website wherever you can!
Examples of Blog Directories include: BlogCatalog, DigNow, OnTopList, BlogTopList…etc.
However, there are many other directories just for showing off your WordPress theme, such as: WeLoveWP, WpInspiration, LoopPress, MixCSS, etc.
Linkbaiting basically refers to getting people to backlink to your site. Oftentimes linkbating is done through contests such as Retweeting and Digging contests where the wordpress blog owner gives out prizes to those that can re tweet a post the most or something else like that.
I am not saying to go out and buy yourself to a 10 page rank (is that possible?). But there is always the option to pay people to link back to your site. Be cautioned though, because t this is not highly viewed by Google and they may penalize your. However, one great way is to find a bunch of not-so-popular blogs and advertise on them for really cheap.
There are so many awesome WordPress SEO Plugins out there that are amazing, so instead of going through all the top SEO Plugins, I just want to give you a list of the WordPress SEO plugins that I currently use on my websites.
SEO Plugins
Get over 40+ beautiful Premium WordPress Themes for just $39 a year. That is less then $1 for each theme, plus it includes premium support and theme updates. Read More
Hi your post is amazing, It’s incredible, I learned a lot about SEO and Man, this thing’s getting better and better as I learn more about internet marketing. And as part of my ongoing mission to find the absolute best tools to make money, this is without a doubt at the top of my list.
This is simply an amazing guide. I will put this information to good use. Thank you!
Nice guide, but you’re missing a few important things.
Get the wordpress plugin Google Sitemap generator. It builds an XML sitemap automatically and notifies search crawlers about changes made on your site. This is essential.
You should really write into more detail about “off page SEO”. This is extremely important to your success. It includes directory submission, article marketing (though these are less effective now) and any off-site commenting made. Keep keywords fairly consistent throughout all your off-site dealings.
Don’t buy paid links, once your link is noticed by Google, you’re going to have to work hard to repair the damage done.
Thanks for the reply justin…I completely agree with you regarding Google Sitemap Generator. I actually have it on my list of SEO plugins that I am building up. That plugin is a MUST for any site.
I may have forgot to mention it, but this post is kinda a work in progress and will be adding things whenever I get time.
Thank for the great points!
Maybe you would like to consider writing a quick article on my site and get some dofollow links to your site and twitter account…Check it out here.
I will send you an email shortly here! I’ll write you up an original article tomorrow and send it to you. Oh I should have also entered my twitter account.
Thanks for following up
(hope I didn’t double post too)
Thanks for the follow-up..
By the way, if you have commented on my site before and already entered a twitter account, it will automatically enter it next time. No need to submit it again.
Cool huh?
thanks for this great post
I love this blog, thanks for article
Very good article but i would like to add something, All in One SEO plugin is not really necessary if the theme is well optimized. I tryied myself, spent a lot of time but i’m satisfied with the result.
What a great post, have implemented your advice as am new to bloging and want to take advantage of the full SEO potential.
Just wanted to thanks for the valuable info about SEO.
thanks for the SEO tips
This blog is getting better and better by the day. I have implemented your tips and strategies for SEO. But I am not very sure if we need to implement noindex for categories and archives? Is it really considered duplicate content? I hope the SERPs are not affected by it…
Anyways, thanks for the great article…
Cheers!
You are correct, indexing your category and archive pages can sometimes really help with SEO.
I suggest if you are indexing them to use the “excerpt” feature so instead of showing the first sentences of the post you have a unique excerpt for each post that is completely original content.
PS: In the future, I know you want some good black-links with key-text, but please try and use a real name as opposed to “Architecture Student”.
I do not want this site to become “spammy” looking.
Thank you!
AJ Clarke,
I apologize for using Architecture Student for anchor text. Will keep it in mind the next time I post a comment.
Cheers!
I appreciate it…I do not have an issue when there is one or two comments. But you are a real talker!